Rex Burkholder may have served the last 12 years on the Metro Council, but he's spent more than two decades working on the issues confronted by the regional government. He's worked on sustainability as an educator and a recycling advocate, he helped establish the Bicycle Transportation Alliance and he worked with 1000 Friends of Oregon.
His term-limited tenure representing northern Portland on the Metro Council ends Monday. Last week, Metro News talked to Burkholder (and fellow term-limited Councilor Carl Hosticka) about their experiences as Metro councilors.
Here's some of what Burkholder said.
Did you feel that you moved towards moderation as you transitioned from activist to elected official?
Some people think it's got a connotation that you're an outsider, but I think most of the people I work with are activists – people who say I want to make a change happen, and they work on that in whatever role they take.
The BTA, I helped deliberately place it in the spectrum of being collaborators and "We're going to work with you and make things happen but we have a pretty strong vision of where we want to go, and we're going to push you to make that happen."
The idea of a spear of change, moving through – there's the point, and in the bicycle world that would be Critical Mass – they're out there being obnoxious and didn't want to negotiate, they just want something now.
The BTA is back in the body of the movement and says "Here's a set of strategies that would work." We're going to do some research, we'll help you get elected, we'll build the public support so you're not hanging out there on your own. It becomes a thing you want to do because it's good for your career if you're an elected official.
A non-activist is someone who says "I'm going to work – it's 8 o'clock. I'm going home, it's 5 o'clock," versus the person who says "There's a neighborhood meeting, I'm going talk about crime. Or I'm going to go to my son's school and volunteer." I consider all those activists.
So what did you do as an activist and Metro Councilor?
The reorganization of Metro, the first-ever strategic planning effort of the agency as a whole, it's a mash up of inherited duties and cultures, working styles, missions… eventually they got all aligned and became the six regional outcomes as the measure of looking at everything we do and saying "How do we do that better?"
The transportation one is saying, "How does transportation serve the community versus being imposed on the community," and rewriting the transportation plan based on the outcomes we were trying to achieve – which has become a national model.
It's now in MAP-21, the idea of performance measurement and performance based planning for all metropolitan areas.
To me, it's amazing. It was a good idea that once it was adopted here it was something (U.S. Transportation Secretary) Ray LaHood actually liked and others thought was a good idea. It probably had much more effect than I ever imagined. I don't know how that'll play out, but that's pretty cool, to think that an idea I helped bring together will make a national impact.
How has the perception of Metro changed in the last 12 years?
In the area I work in, in the city of Portland, what Metro provides is seen as high value. It always was valued by people – preserving farm and forest land, having high recycling rates, a zoo people are proud of – most people did not know they were Metro operations.
In my community, people are more likely to say I know what Metro does than they would have 12 years ago. Part of that is my own effort of being out in the community, all the time. I enjoy it – I love going to events, I love talking to people and I love having people understand what Metro can do for them, and work with them.
There goes Joey Lyons, one of our equity masters, and he's here at the Metro building. Twelve years ago you would not have seen people of color, or representatives from these kinds of groups at Metro. They weren't invited.
Does the Metro Council's frequent unanimity feed a stereotype that Metro is this ivory tower where these seven elected officials all agree on everything?
When you have to make real choices they're tough. A lot of stuff we do is management, oversight and budgets. The vote is the outcome of a long process of discussion.
I've approached it like we're the board of directors of a large public corporation, and our job is not to have positions on things but to solve problems. A lot of that happens during our work with staff and work sessions. What comes before the council to vote on, we've already figured out this is the best thing we can do, and we don't have to have debates and vote on things.
But look at the urban growth boundary – we had very divided votes on those kinds of things. And sometimes budget items get tense as well.
I’m reading a book about a guy who worked in South Africa, Paraguay, everywhere, on helping solve complex issues. And I think Metro is based on this kind of concept – how you solve these things is you have open dialogues of all the parties involved.
That's what MPAC and JPACT aspire to be and public outreach aspires to be is that kind of open dialogues where people are free to say "I disagree with you on this, and I want this," but you still have to come to an answer in the end.
Complex problems require decision-making – it's not a debate where everyone presents their point of view and votes and whoever has the most votes wins. That doesn't solve the problem, it just continues it.
When we start failing is when people start taking positions. And not just the council, but our fellow electeds, when we bring them in – "This is what I want" and they're not going to even budge or listen to you, then those hard ones don't get solved.
What didn't get done in your 12 years?
We got a start on the issue of climate change. We need to refocus our efforts on sustainability in a broad sense. And 2008 brought a resolution that directed us to do that, including creating a climate response strategy.
That's going to be the determining issue of our future – how do we respond. We have to remake our economy, we have to change how people live. And it's going to hit us pretty hard and there's a lot of resistance to change and the huge infrastructure shifts we have to make.
I'm disappointed – we put $75 million in a new streetcar line and if you look around, the only bicycle accommodations are a little picture of a man flipping over a streetcar track, warning you to watch out.
There's no improvements, the streets are still anti-bicycle and there was an opportunity there to put in bike-facilities and make this a major north-south route that's very needed.
Those kinds of things are like "Shoot, this is a bad decision for the future because we're not helping make the transitions we need to make."
Some active transportation advocates have been critical of your support of the Columbia River Crossing. How do you reconcile your sitting here saying "Grand needed a bike lane, it could have been a world-class bike facility" with "I want to see a 10-lane bridge across the Columbia River"?
I want to see a bridge across the Columbia River, because it's falling down, you need to replace it, it's got awful facilities for biking and walking.
It also doesn't have mass transit. A new bridge gives you the opportunity to accomplish all of those.
The size of it is a matter of negotiation, discussion and compromise.
The new proposal governor has come forward with – with some tweaks to make it better for biking, walking and local communities, is better from my perspective than the original proposal.
The locally-preferred alternative is a product of politics. You've got to negotiate, you've got to meet everyone's needs in one way or another.
And remember, it started out as a 14-lane proposal that maybe wouldn't have light rail, and then it became a 10-lane proposal with great bike facilities and light rail. I think it's going to be a reality. And with a smaller amount of money proposed by the governor, I think it will be better from our perspective in terms of community development than the original proposal.
Are you looking forward to your Tuesdays and Thursdays?
It's like graduating from high school. You've had 12 years of schooling. You've had a great time, lots of good friends, there's been competitions and cooperation and all that kind of stuff.
But you're ready. You've done what you can do. It's time for someone else to take it over and you're ready for new adventures.
It's a bittersweet kind of thing. I'm ready to roll but it's always hard saying goodbye, especially when you've had such a good time as I've had the last couple of years in terms of being productive and making things happen.
What else?
This is an amazing community of people. I'm proud to be an activist, this community's full of activists. It's an amazing story I tell when I talk to people about why Portland is different.
Portland could be like Cleveland. We've had four depressions since I moved here. I'm going through my files and I found stuff from 2003 that's all about "As we recover from the recession what are we going to do?"
But the Portland region's different, because of that commitment of people that say "I'm going to keep working towards this goal, this vision that we have and I want to make sure my community's a better place tomorrow than it is today."